GospelofJohn

Love Comes from a Fountain Not from the Sky

Love, Word of God / By / / Leave a Comment
Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Paolo Veronese, cerca 1585 (See John 4:7-42)

God’s love does not rain down upon you and I from Heaven. We do not drink water from the sky. We drink water from a spring. Likewise, we receive the love of God from a fountain. Now, there are many fountains, but not all fountains are springing with the love of God. God has made my fountain pure. Through the blood of Jesus Christ my heart has been washed white as snow. I am a fountain flowing with the pure love of God, because God has washed me and made me clean. The words that I write to you are not my words; they are His words. They are words of truth and of life, because they are the words of Jesus.

When anyone takes my words and causes them to mean something different than what I wrote, they are not simply manipulating my own words. They are making God out to be a liar, because they are His words, not mine.

God is not obsessed with you, Bee! And neither am I!

God is a jealous God. God created you and He loves you. He has given you a free will to choose as you would. Why would you not choose life? He is holding out His hand. He is the God of all salvation. He is the God of all comfort. He is truth. He is light. He is the creator and the source of true and pure love. He is life. He gave His own life for you. He does not want you to worship the idols of the world. He wants you to worship Him, your creator. He is a jealous God.

But you say, “I don’t worship any idols?” Oh! But you do! Everything you covet you worship. You desire the praise of the men and the women around you, in your life. You want to be “somebody.” You want to have a nice car and a nice home. You want to eat delicious meals and drink tasty cocktails. You want to travel and experience faraway places. You want to be entertained. You spend all of your time thinking about these worldly pleasures.

All of these desires are things that are given to you and I by God. God wants you and I to have good and beautiful things in our lives, but He does not want us to covet them. They are all things that He created. God does not want you and I to worship His creations. He wants you and I to worship Him!

He wants you and I to live!

When we turn our back on God and we fail to recognize Him and to praise Him for all his blessings, we are not living. We are dead in trespasses and sin. The only way we can have true life is through Jesus Christ.

This is not obsession!

I have never had any desire to possess you. God has never had any desire to possess you. If God wanted to possess you, he would. He is God. There is nothing that could ever stop God from possessing you. But God does not possess you, does He?

Does a mother want to keep her baby in her womb and hold on to her baby forever? No, she wants her baby to grow and to be born a spirit of its own.

Bee, God wants to give unto you! He wants to give you living water. He wants to give to you life! He wants to give you a new heart! He wants to give you salvation from your own sin and iniquity.

This is what I want for you, Bee! I want you to have life and joy and peace. I will do anything that God commands me in order to see to it that you obtain it. I will gladly forfeit my own life for that purpose. But nothing I do can give you eternal life. Only Jesus can give you eternal life. All I am trying to do is to lead you to His outstretched hand.

Take hold of His hand and live, Bee!

Take His hand.

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Today’s Prayer

Prayer / By /

Father, Thank you for your excellent Word. Thank you, Lord, that that your Word so immensely deep, powerful, and meaningful that it causes us great effort simply to understand those truths that you consider to be of the smallest things that you have to present to us. Every time that we study your Word you show us increasingly more marvelous and incredible wonders. I do not know Lord, but it seems that often times the more that I read a passage, the greater the meaning that comes from it. One might think that it would be the other way around, but your Word is so alive and living and endless. Your Word is always abounding with instruction, truth, grace, and love. We ask you Lord that you would bless us with a greater understanding the bounty of marvelous things that you have to show us in your Word. Bless us now, Father, that we would see and understand our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through those things that we study your Word today.

We pray in Jesus’s excellent name. Amen!

To Read the English Translation of These Two Passages of Scripture >

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Sleepy Head …

Challenges, Challenges, Nautical / By / / Leave a Comment
A tired black-footed ferret kit yawns for USFWS photographer, Kimberly Tamkun 2012

My dear friend,

I have already established that the starting point will likely be in Singapore, in the summer of 2022.  To be more specific, it would be undesirable to depart out of Singapore any later than the end of July 2022.  If I left any later, then it would certainly dictate a stay in Tasmania for the winter of 2023.  (Winter in Tasmania runs from June to September.)  If I leave Singapore in July (or earlier), then I may have a shot at making it all the way to Cabo de Hornos, Chile before the fall of 2023 fully sets in (around May or early June).

That could only happen if everything were to go perfectly.  If I were able to average 50 miles (80 km) each travel day, it could be possible.  50 mi/day on the water is achievable when conditions are good, but expectations for perfect weather somewhat diminish the closer one progresses towards Antarctica.  By land, that rate of travel is slightly more attainable; however, 50 mi/day on the snow and ice is pure fantasy.  Therefore, the overall conditions would need to be especially perfect and consistent, and I would need to be able to maximize my travel days as much as possible.

Therefore, I suspect that I may have to winter in Tasmania (or perhaps in McMurdo, Antarctica) in 2023.  Then when the weather improves, I would be able to move forward with my crossing of Antarctica in the summer of 2023/2024.  God only knows!  The idea of traveling from Singapore to the South Pole to Cabo de Hornos, Chile in a single year is preposterous!  Even still, I do not want to limit the arm of the Lord.  If it is His will to make it happen, then it will come to pass.

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Sleepy Head …Read More »

Sleepy Head … Read More »

My Strange Story – a Recap of the Introduction

Introduction / By / / Leave a Comment

Hello friends,

Many of you have seen the notifications of my eight previous articles that I recently posted to my new blog site.  If you have not been following from the beginning, you are probably mystified by what you have seen thus far.  Therefore, I thought it would be good to give you a recap, so that the purpose is made clear, without any additional reading of my previous posts.  Obviously, I cannot condense all 30 minutes of reading material into this little post.  Therefore, you would like to understand more, please follow the embedded links to the other articles.

The summary of it all is this: God has blessed me with an errand to do.  He wants me to travel around the world preaching the Word of God … literally!  Not like Paul the apostle or any other great preacher of the past.  No, God is sending me on a conquest to circumnavigate the Earth via the South and the North Poles using nothing but my own human power.  Wherever I go, I am to proclaim the Word of God on this blog and by any other means of communication that will accomplish the task.

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My Strange Story – a Recap of the Introduction Read More »

What is Solo Human-Powered Polar Circumnavigation?

Circumnavigation / By / / Leave a Comment
Colin Angus rowing across the Atlantic Ocean 2014
Roz Savage ocean rowing in Hawaii 2008

My dear friend,

    Perhaps when I use the term “Solo human powered polar circumnavigation” you are not so sure what I mean by the use of those terms.  I am confident that pretty much everyone is a bit foggy of what that means.  In actuality, there is not complete agreement among the experts of what any of these terms mean.  There is not even a consensus of what constitutes a true circumnavigation of the Earth.

    Therefore, with this post we will take a brief look at a few circumnavigations in the annals of history to get a little better idea of what the terms mean in application.  In subsequent posts, I will expand on these topics as they come into view.  The whole business is surprisingly complicated.  It is not something that we want to fully analyze in a single blog post.  If you look at the Wikipedia page on the topic, you will see what I mean.  It is a fairly lengthy article, and it does hardly more that scratch the surface of the subject.

    In the 1500’s there were a number of adventures that made attempts at circumnavigating the Earth in wooden sailing vessels, including Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Francis Drake.  There is no lack of debate about who completed what journey, what ship they were on, and if it constituted a single voyage or not.  Ever since then, men have debated about every circumnavigation that has ever been attempted.  Is it a circumnavigation in the truest sense of the word?  Was it completed in a single set of consecutive uninterrupted voyages?  Was it completed in the same vessel?  Were the crew members all the same? On and on are these types of questions are bantered about.  They are all good questions; however, there seems to be a great deal of splitting hairs among the experts and the onlookers and very little regard for the actual accomplishments.

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What is Solo Human-Powered Polar Circumnavigation?Read More »

What is Solo Human-Powered Polar Circumnavigation? Read More »

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